The Rainbow

She put her hand lightly on his arm, out of her far distance.

And out of the distance, he felt her touch him. They walked on,

hand in hand, along opposite horizons, touching across the dusk.

There was a sound of thrushes calling in the dark blue

twilight.

"I think we are going to have an infant, Bill," she said,

from far off.

He trembled, and his fingers tightened on hers.

"Why?" he asked, his heart beating. "You don't know?"

"I do," she said.

They continued without saying any more, walking along

opposite horizons, hand in hand across the intervening space,

two separate people. And he trembled as if a wind blew on to him

in strong gusts, out of the unseen. He was afraid. He was afraid

to know he was alone. For she seemed fulfilled and separate and

sufficient in her half of the world. He could not bear to know

that he was cut off. Why could he not be always one with her? It

was he who had given her the child. Why could she not be with

him, one with him? Why must he be set in this separateness, why

could she not be with him, close, close, as one with him? She

must be one with him.

He held her fingers tightly in his own. She did not know what

he was thinking. The blaze of light on her heart was too

beautiful and dazzling, from the conception in her womb. She

walked glorified, and the sound of the thrushes, of the trains

in the valley, of the far-off, faint noises of the town, were

her "Magnificat".

But he was struggling in silence. It seemed as though there

were before him a solid wall of darkness that impeded him and

suffocated him and made him mad. He wanted her to come to him,

to complete him, to stand before him so that his eyes did not,

should not meet the naked darkness. Nothing mattered to him but

that she should come and complete him. For he was ridden by the

awful sense of his own limitation. It was as if he ended

uncompleted, as yet uncreated on the darkness, and he wanted her

to come and liberate him into the whole.

But she was complete in herself, and he was ashamed of his

need, his helpless need of her. His need, and his shame of need,

weighed on him like a madness. Yet still he was quiet and

gentle, in reverence of her conception, and because she was with

child by him.

And she was happy in showers of sunshine. She loved her

husband, as a presence, as a grateful condition. But for the

moment her need was fulfilled, and now she wanted only to hold

her husband by the hand in sheer happiness, without taking

thought, only being glad.